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0:01:04 (upbeat music)
0:01:07 – If you were to write the history
0:01:10 of modern American conservatism,
0:01:12 where would you start?
0:01:15 I mean, obviously you’d start with a half leader
0:01:17 of the cheapest bourbon available,
0:01:20 but after that, what’s step two?
0:01:23 Maybe start somewhere in the 1930s,
0:01:26 just before World War II?
0:01:30 Or maybe you begin with the Cold War and anti-communism.
0:01:33 Cases can be made for both of those entry points,
0:01:37 but one fascinating moment in this whole history
0:01:39 is the early ’90s.
0:01:47 The question is, why?
0:01:51 What the hell happened in the ’90s?
0:01:54 A period of relative peace and stability
0:01:57 that was so consequential,
0:01:58 and why did so many people
0:02:01 miss the significance of this at the time?
0:02:06 I’m Sean Elling,
0:02:08 and this is the Gray Area.
0:02:11 (upbeat music)
0:02:25 Today’s guest is John Gans.
0:02:28 He’s the writer of the newsletter “Unpopular Front,”
0:02:31 and the author of a new book called “When the Clock Broke.”
0:02:37 There’s no Rosetta Stone for understanding Trump,
0:02:40 and it’s not quite right to call this book
0:02:43 a prehistory of Trumpism,
0:02:44 but it does something better
0:02:47 than any other work I’ve encountered,
0:02:50 which is to give some kind of shape
0:02:53 to the sense of despair and resentment
0:02:56 that’s come to define our politics.
0:03:02 Gans does this by looking backwards to 1992 specifically,
0:03:04 Bill Clinton.
0:03:06 – The end of the Cold War
0:03:08 and the beginning of the next century.
0:03:09 – Rush Limbaugh.
0:03:11 – Liberals, I believe, have destroyed
0:03:12 or in the process of destroying
0:03:14 the culture of this country.
0:03:15 – David Duke.
0:03:17 – I think there is racism going on today,
0:03:18 except now it’s being exercised
0:03:20 against the white majority.
0:03:21 – John Gotti.
0:03:22 – You don’t know if I get there,
0:03:24 it’s kicking you good for me.
0:03:25 – It’s all there,
0:03:30 and it all looks, in retrospect, a lot like today.
0:03:32 And you can draw, if you look,
0:03:34 a straight line from that period
0:03:35 to the present.
0:03:39 So I invited John onto the show to walk me through it.
0:03:45 John Gans, welcome to the show.
0:03:47 – Oh, it’s so great to be here, Sean, thanks.
0:03:48 – We’re gonna work our way to Trump.
0:03:50 Unfortunately, we have to.
0:03:54 But let’s start with the year 1992,
0:03:58 which isn’t the beginning of the movement
0:03:59 that led to Trump,
0:04:04 but it was a significant moment in that movement.
0:04:07 – What the hell happened in 1992?
0:04:10 Why is that the entry point for you?
0:04:12 – Well, a bunch of different things.
0:04:14 The two-party system got its strongest challenge
0:04:17 from a third-party candidate for almost 100 years, right?
0:04:18 In the form of Ross Perot.
0:04:23 The Republican Party got a very strong challenge
0:04:24 from its right flank
0:04:28 that arguably wounded its candidate,
0:04:31 an incumbent who had come off a successful war,
0:04:35 who you might think would be a shoo-in to win reelection,
0:04:37 but lost partially because he was wounded
0:04:40 by this insurgency from the right in his own party.
0:04:44 You’ve got the worst civil disorder since the Civil War,
0:04:47 some people say, in the LA riots.
0:04:50 In 1991, in Louisiana,
0:04:52 a neo-Nazi runs for governor
0:04:55 and does surprisingly well for someone with that background.
0:04:58 And that excites a lot of the people
0:05:00 who want to primary Bush
0:05:02 and are looking for a way to push American politics
0:05:03 to the right.
0:05:05 You also have the country in the aftermath
0:05:08 of a pretty nasty recession
0:05:13 brought about by the popping of a few financial bubbles
0:05:14 in commercial real estate
0:05:19 and with some kind of dodgy new forms of financial instrument
0:05:22 that at first seemed to promise infinite wealth
0:05:24 and prosperity on Wall Street
0:05:28 and then turned out to be a speculative bubble.
0:05:32 Also, the popularity of a new form of media, talk radio,
0:05:36 which a lot of people are responding to,
0:05:37 are very enthusiastic about,
0:05:39 and a lot of people are very uneasy
0:05:41 with what’s being said on talk radio and the tone of it,
0:05:46 which is quite angry, alienated, even hateful.
0:05:47 So these are some of the things
0:05:51 that are kind of churning in that year.
0:05:55 – It’s worth holding for a few minutes on David Duke.
0:05:59 – Sure. – He’s so cartoonish
0:06:00 in so many ways that it’s hard to believe
0:06:05 he’s a real person, but he is unfortunately very real.
0:06:07 What’s worth knowing about him?
0:06:10 Why is he a significant character in this story?
0:06:15 – David Duke was known in American life for a while
0:06:16 before the 1990s
0:06:20 because he was kind of the public face of the Klan
0:06:22 and neo-Nazism in America.
0:06:27 But he had been largely a kind of political failure
0:06:32 as attempts to run for office were always unsuccessful
0:06:35 until the end of the 1980s
0:06:39 when he runs and becomes a state legislator in Louisiana.
0:06:44 And what’s notable about Duke is that he runs as a Republican.
0:06:46 The establishment of the Republican Party,
0:06:50 both on the state and the national level, does not like this,
0:06:53 throws a lot of effort into trying to stop him
0:06:54 in all his races.
0:06:55 He runs for state legislator wins.
0:06:57 He runs for Senate and loses.
0:06:59 And then he runs for governor and loses.
0:07:01 They throw a lot of resources at him.
0:07:04 And he really bedevils this establishment
0:07:08 has an extremely loyal core constituency
0:07:09 that sticks with him,
0:07:11 even though the president of the United States
0:07:14 is making radio ads against him,
0:07:17 even though the RNC is sending people down there to fight him.
0:07:21 He attracts this anti-establishment energy,
0:07:22 which is very powerful.
0:07:25 And when he runs for governor of Louisiana
0:07:27 and he loses in a landslide,
0:07:29 but he wins a majority of the white vote.
0:07:30 Yeah.
0:07:33 And this makes a lot of people’s ears perk up,
0:07:37 particularly people to the right of Ronald Reagan
0:07:39 and to the right of George H.W. Bush,
0:07:42 who see in David Dukes the difficulty
0:07:45 that the establishment of the Republican Party
0:07:48 had in fighting off David Dukes insurgency
0:07:50 as a hopeful sign that the time
0:07:52 for their own politics had arrived.
0:07:54 Yeah, just a fun fact.
0:07:59 I lived in Louisiana for about a decade.
0:08:03 And I saw Duke in person one time up close
0:08:07 at the state Capitol and good Lord.
0:08:10 I mean, he really did look like an alien
0:08:12 wearing a human meat suit.
0:08:13 You know what I mean?
0:08:14 Yeah.
0:08:16 Well, that’s a lot of bad plastic surgery.
0:08:17 Yeah.
0:08:19 You know, that’s funny that the facelift
0:08:22 is kind of an apt metaphor of David Dukes’ career
0:08:25 because he’s attempted to give himself these facelifts
0:08:27 that would make him more attractive to the public
0:08:30 and never quite entirely been able to bury
0:08:32 or wanted to bury because that’s who he is
0:08:35 and what his politics are about, the Nazi past.
0:08:39 But it’s a remarkable that in 1992,
0:08:42 the war was still very much in living memory.
0:08:45 But, you know, to have somebody who claimed to be formally
0:08:49 but was really still a Nazi have this measure
0:08:50 of political success.
0:08:52 And it wasn’t just local.
0:08:54 A lot of people across the country
0:08:57 seem to be responding to his message.
0:08:58 That’s right.
0:09:02 And certainly one lesson that other conservatives drew
0:09:06 correctly from the Duke phenomenon
0:09:09 was that these old Republican cliches
0:09:13 about taxes and the economy and the rest of it
0:09:16 really cease to matter to a lot of their actual voters
0:09:17 if they ever mattered at all.
0:09:19 And Duke exposed that.
0:09:21 There’s a certain type of conservative
0:09:22 that refused to see this.
0:09:23 I’m sure we’ll get to that.
0:09:26 But that was revelatory for a lot of conservatives.
0:09:29 Yeah, I mean, one of the main figures of my book
0:09:32 who was kind of the, I don’t know,
0:09:35 maybe the John the Baptist of Trumpism.
0:09:38 One might say, Sam Francis says liberals
0:09:41 keep on saying David Duke is the natural result
0:09:43 of Reaganism, and they’re right.
0:09:46 But Reaganism is not about democracy.
0:09:47 It’s not about free trade.
0:09:49 It’s not about low taxes.
0:09:52 It’s about a certain part of the American population,
0:09:55 the oldest core of the American civilization,
0:09:57 feeling a sense of dispossession
0:10:00 and beginning to fight back against that dispossession
0:10:02 and the political emergence of David Duke
0:10:05 as a logical progression of that.
0:10:08 And Duke made something like an effort to downplay
0:10:12 or sidestep his Nazi past.
0:10:15 Yes, but it’s worth just for perspective.
0:10:17 How successful was he at that?
0:10:19 Or was it more of like just a bit of a hoodwink?
0:10:22 And how much support did he actually acquire
0:10:25 both locally and nationally, just so people know?
0:10:28 Well, he was able to win 55% of the white vote
0:10:31 who either didn’t care or were satisfied
0:10:33 with his disavows of his Nazi past, of course.
0:10:35 And they were rather thin
0:10:39 because activists were able to go to his legislative office
0:10:41 and buy Nazi books, which they were selling on.
0:10:43 And he was still part of an organization
0:10:45 called the National Association
0:10:46 for the Advancement of White People.
0:10:48 So if you scratched it all,
0:10:53 this disavowal of Nazism was the thinnest of facades.
0:10:56 But his rhetoric in certain ways has to make peace
0:11:00 with certain kind of egalitarian cliches
0:11:02 you would expect most normal politicians to say,
0:11:06 “I just want an equal shot for everybody,”
0:11:09 but playing up that whites were discriminated against.
0:11:12 In a lot of ways, it’s remarkable,
0:11:14 not just on race, but on other issues.
0:11:18 His rhetoric is a lot more sedate than say Donald Trump.
0:11:19 Oh yeah.
0:11:20 Donald Trump gets away with saying things
0:11:22 that David Duke would not dare
0:11:23 and wouldn’t have got away with
0:11:26 in a tone that David Duke wouldn’t have taken.
0:11:30 So he was able to portray himself
0:11:32 because of Republicans had already moved
0:11:34 quite far to the right under Reagan
0:11:36 as a conservative Republican,
0:11:39 maybe with certain emphases
0:11:41 that they weren’t quite comfortable with making,
0:11:43 but then could kind of hide back
0:11:46 under the mantle of Reaganism and conservatism.
0:11:49 It’s strange, there’s something quite amphibian about Duke.
0:11:54 He can appear extremely conventional, even banal.
0:11:57 And at other times that mask slips
0:12:01 and you really see, okay, the core of his politics
0:12:03 that politics are basically about a race war
0:12:05 remain in place.
0:12:08 It was almost kind of advantageous for him in that way.
0:12:10 There’s really no need for him to even dog whistle
0:12:12 when you know his past, right?
0:12:13 I mean, it’s very clear
0:12:15 like who he is and where he’s coming from.
0:12:16 He doesn’t have to say it.
0:12:17 Yeah, not so much.
0:12:20 I mean, he does, but he talks
0:12:22 in the Argo of Republican politicians
0:12:26 at the time, welfare, quotas, affirmative action.
0:12:28 Now, this is around the time
0:12:33 another prominent figure, less marginal, enters the chat.
0:12:34 And this is Pat Buchanan,
0:12:37 who really sees him an opportunity here.
0:12:38 Yeah.
0:12:39 Tell me about that.
0:12:42 So Pat Buchanan, I mean, I’m sure your listeners
0:12:44 are familiar with the name.
0:12:47 He was one of America’s most prominent conservatives.
0:12:49 He had worked in two White Houses.
0:12:50 He worked in the Nixon White House.
0:12:53 He had a quite close relationship with Richard Nixon.
0:12:55 He worked in the Reagan White House.
0:12:59 He was very admiring also of Ronald Reagan.
0:13:00 He was a media figure.
0:13:02 He appeared on cable news.
0:13:04 He was a syndicated columnist.
0:13:08 And Pat Buchanan said the biggest vacuum
0:13:12 in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan.
0:13:14 And he sought to occupy that vacuum.
0:13:16 And he and some of the writers
0:13:18 and intellectuals who surrounded him
0:13:22 saw David Duke as being the signal
0:13:23 that the time had come for him
0:13:25 to launch his own political ambitions.
0:13:27 So he launches a campaign
0:13:30 emulating a lot of the appeals and issues
0:13:33 of David Duke to primary Bush.
0:13:37 But there are things that you would see later
0:13:39 in the Trumpian turn,
0:13:43 a dissatisfaction with foreign interventionism,
0:13:48 a return to kind of pre-war isolationist ideas,
0:13:53 protectionism and embrace of nationalism.
0:13:54 And this nationalism is very different
0:13:59 from the kind of patriotism that George H.W. Bush
0:14:01 as this veteran of World War II
0:14:04 portrayed himself as standing for.
0:14:09 So Buchanan also speaks the language of the extreme right.
0:14:12 But in a muted way,
0:14:14 he familiarizes himself with it.
0:14:17 He knows it, but he’s an establishment figure
0:14:19 in a lot of ways and gets away with it.
0:14:22 – So there’s all this anger bubbling up
0:14:26 and Duke and Buchanan become the faces of it.
0:14:30 And it’s a little ugly, but it still feels contained.
0:14:32 Bill Clinton, a centrist Democrat,
0:14:35 he wins the presidential election,
0:14:37 the economy improves.
0:14:40 And I was too young to have any kind of political consciousness
0:14:43 back then, but I assume the establishment figured
0:14:47 at that point that all that sound and fury
0:14:49 was just a weird flash bang,
0:14:50 but nothing to worry about anymore.
0:14:51 It’s all good.
0:14:53 The DC machine’s just gonna keep on rolling.
0:14:55 But that’s obviously not what happened, right?
0:14:57 All this shit goes underground,
0:14:58 burrows into the culture,
0:15:00 and then it just keeps festering.
0:15:03 – Yeah, I say that political establishment failed
0:15:04 or had certain fails or imagination
0:15:06 or tactics or strategy in the book,
0:15:08 but it is true that they did adapt.
0:15:13 First of all, Clinton’s appeal was definitely designed
0:15:14 and succeeded in winning back
0:15:16 some of the so-called Reagan Democrats.
0:15:20 The Republicans paid very close attention to Ross Perot.
0:15:22 So they did adapt,
0:15:24 but I don’t think that they really understood
0:15:26 the depths these forces represented
0:15:28 and thought that in their adaptation,
0:15:30 they had contained them or diffused them.
0:15:34 It took a long time for this stuff to reassert itself,
0:15:36 the 1990s.
0:15:39 But you know, Bob Dole is the nominee in 1996,
0:15:42 although Pepe Kanan wins the state,
0:15:47 and Ross Perot is unable to recreate
0:15:49 the kind of magic he had.
0:15:50 But in a way, they doubled down
0:15:52 on a lot of the same problems
0:15:55 that gave rise to the anger in the first place.
0:15:57 You have during the Reagan 80s,
0:15:59 a lot of deregulation of finance
0:16:01 that leads to speculative bubbles,
0:16:03 like the savings and loan crisis,
0:16:06 a big Wall Street crash,
0:16:08 commercial real estate boom and crash.
0:16:12 And the consensus doesn’t really change
0:16:15 that, okay, well, we need to bring Wall Street back to heel.
0:16:18 It’s like, no, this pattern of deregulation
0:16:20 of Wall Street of financial institutions
0:16:22 continues and even intensifies.
0:16:25 There’s also free trade in the 80s
0:16:28 is causing a lot of disruption, globalization,
0:16:29 deindustrialization, all of these things
0:16:31 are causing disruption.
0:16:34 And these policies are not abandoned.
0:16:37 They are altered, they are softened in some cases,
0:16:40 but in other cases, they’re intensified and pursued harder.
0:16:44 So then when the big one comes in 2008,
0:16:47 the political forces that unleashes
0:16:51 are even more radical or more acute and intense
0:16:54 than the ones that you saw in the early 90s.
0:16:55 – What we’re really talking about here
0:16:59 is this kind of transition of the Republican Party
0:17:01 from the party of Reagan
0:17:03 to eventually the party of Trump.
0:17:06 And you mentioned Sam Francis a few minutes ago.
0:17:09 Now, he’s someone, I suspect most people
0:17:11 have never heard of, but do you argue
0:17:13 that he did as much as anyone
0:17:16 to facilitate or accelerate this transition?
0:17:21 Who was he and what really did he see in the electorate
0:17:24 that other conservatives at the time couldn’t or wouldn’t?
0:17:27 – Sam Francis was a Republican staffer.
0:17:30 He comes out of the South.
0:17:32 He works for the Heritage Foundation,
0:17:34 which was kind of the think tank created
0:17:36 to create a policy infrastructure
0:17:38 for the conservative movement.
0:17:40 He works as a Senate staffer.
0:17:42 I mean, to say he’s part of the conservative movement
0:17:44 is right nominally,
0:17:47 but he doesn’t consider himself a conservative.
0:17:50 He considers himself a man of the radical right.
0:17:54 He believes essentially that there’s nothing left to conserve,
0:17:56 that the institutions are too corrupted,
0:17:58 they’re too overtaken by liberalism,
0:18:01 and that they must be overthrown.
0:18:04 A new order must be established
0:18:07 that is a reactionary social agenda,
0:18:10 but does not preserve much of the old ways of doing things,
0:18:13 which he thinks are hopelessly liberal.
0:18:15 – So a counter-revolution, basically.
0:18:18 – A counter-revolution needs to take place.
0:18:21 There needs to be a populist, Caesarist presidency
0:18:23 that uses the power of the president
0:18:26 to kind of smash the enemies of middle American radicals
0:18:30 as he calls them and reconfigure the economy
0:18:33 and the moral and intellectual state of the United States
0:18:35 in the favor of their interests.
0:18:40 So he has this radical authoritarian populist vision
0:18:44 for the direction of the conservative movement
0:18:45 in the American right.
0:18:50 – One big thing he recognizes is,
0:18:52 and boy is this still relevant,
0:18:56 is how much regular people around the country
0:19:00 really, really came to despise the ruling elites.
0:19:01 – Oh yes.
0:19:03 – And this is a kind of energy
0:19:06 that these figures really channeled.
0:19:06 – Absolutely.
0:19:09 I think what differentiates what I’m talking about
0:19:11 from the conservatism that came before
0:19:14 basically is part and parcel of that rejection of elites
0:19:17 as the ideologies associated with elites
0:19:22 that there were some kind of impersonal institutions
0:19:25 that would provide a fair break
0:19:26 or an opportunities for people.
0:19:30 From on the left, that was kind of features
0:19:32 of social democracy, the welfare state,
0:19:34 what was left of it after Reagan,
0:19:37 trying to create more egalitarian parts of economic life,
0:19:40 access to education, access to healthcare, those things.
0:19:43 On the right, it’s a belief in the market
0:19:45 and the belief that basically,
0:19:47 if we let the market do what it needs to do,
0:19:51 everyone will have a crack, people will find their niche
0:19:53 and if unchained market forces
0:19:55 will have almost utopian outcomes,
0:19:58 of course, none of that happens.
0:20:01 Society remains highly competitive,
0:20:02 people’s lives are very precarious,
0:20:04 they fall through the cracks,
0:20:08 they fear social decline, they experience social decline.
0:20:13 So these stories, these ideologies about the rules of society
0:20:17 that would permit people to have prosperous lives,
0:20:20 if you just obey them and follow these norms,
0:20:22 don’t appear convincing to people.
0:20:25 And then people who come along and say,
0:20:28 well, I’m not gonna sell you any of that bullshit.
0:20:32 We, the nation, the family, the race, whatever,
0:20:34 some bounded or smaller group,
0:20:36 need to face the fact that society’s unfair
0:20:38 and we’re going to take an unfair advantage
0:20:42 and we’re going to band together to get ours
0:20:45 and we’re gonna make sure that you, if you’re with us,
0:20:46 get the spoils.
0:20:54 – After a short break,
0:20:57 how did we go from David Duke and Pat Buchanan
0:20:59 to Donald Trump?
0:20:59 Stay with us.
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0:23:49 if not more, right?
0:23:51 How else are you gonna keep your food fresh long enough
0:23:53 so you actually eat it?
0:23:55 Not necessarily.
0:23:56 This episode of “Gastropod,”
0:23:58 how the future of refrigeration
0:24:01 might not involve refrigeration at all.
0:24:02 – These are untreated lemons.
0:24:05 So this is eight weeks old and these are the same age.
0:24:07 So these are treated and these are untreated.
0:24:07 – That’s nuts.
0:24:08 – Yeah.
0:24:09 – I mean, look at them.
0:24:10 – Pepper’s the same thing.
0:24:11 So untreated and then these are treated
0:24:13 and they’re both the same age.
0:24:15 You should feel it actually.
0:24:16 I mean, they’re solid.
0:24:18 – Bell peppers nearly as good as new
0:24:20 after eight weeks at room temperature.
0:24:22 This is a new technology that could help address
0:24:24 one of the most serious offenders
0:24:26 when it comes to global warming, your fridge.
0:24:28 “Gastropod” has got the story.
0:24:30 Find “Gastropod” and subscribe
0:24:32 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24:46 – You know, it is sort of amazing how
0:24:50 we just kind of all basically forgot
0:24:55 that Trump lunged into national politics with birtherism.
0:24:59 That was his thing.
0:25:01 That was his opening gambit.
0:25:04 And you could argue it was the most deliberate move
0:25:06 he’s made as a politician.
0:25:08 I mean, again, this is partly what makes
0:25:12 the incessant revisionism of Trump or conservatives so silly.
0:25:15 It’s like, “Hey, fellas, I get that you want
0:25:17 conservatism to have a serious intellectual foundation.”
0:25:21 But this guy staked his whole political identity
0:25:23 on a conspiracy about our first black president
0:25:25 being born in Kenya.
0:25:27 This isn’t a footnote.
0:25:29 – No, I totally agree.
0:25:31 And I think that that really says it all.
0:25:34 And I’ve always said that there’s one single myth
0:25:37 underlying ideal of Trumpism,
0:25:39 which is that certain Americans aren’t really Americans.
0:25:42 It was first articulated in birtherism.
0:25:46 He knew more than other Republican elites
0:25:49 that that’s what the message of the Tea Party really was.
0:25:51 Other conservative and Republican elites said,
0:25:52 “Oh, it’s about taxes.
0:25:55 It’s about entitlement reform, all this BS.”
0:25:58 He said, “No, no, no, Obama is not the president.
0:25:59 He’s not a citizen.
0:26:00 Some people aren’t citizens.
0:26:04 People who don’t look like us act, think like us, et cetera.”
0:26:06 And then that takes on a different manifestation
0:26:08 in the stolen election myth.
0:26:09 What does that say?
0:26:10 Well, roughly the same thing.
0:26:12 Certain people aren’t really Americans.
0:26:14 Their votes don’t count.
0:26:16 You, the real citizenry,
0:26:18 are being disenfranchised and dispossessed.
0:26:23 The actual facts of the matter don’t matter that much.
0:26:26 What is being peddled here is a myth.
0:26:31 It’s a way of conceiving of a certain social vision,
0:26:33 not a statement about facts.
0:26:35 It’s something more primal.
0:26:38 Trump is that myth incarnate.
0:26:42 – Yeah, and the continuous cluelessness
0:26:45 of conservative intellectuals about all of this
0:26:47 is pretty extraordinary.
0:26:51 I mean, they had and continue to have
0:26:55 the same delusion with Trump that they’ve always had,
0:26:58 which is that we can ride this tiger of popular rage
0:27:02 and use it to channel our own plutocratic fantasies,
0:27:04 even though they have nothing in common
0:27:06 with the people they’re mobilizing.
0:27:08 And eventually that train was always gonna
0:27:10 careen off the tracks.
0:27:12 – Yeah, and I think that that tiger will bite them.
0:27:13 – And it has.
0:27:14 I mean, they’re really playing with fire.
0:27:15 Let’s face it.
0:27:19 I mean, Trump is able to mobilize a mob in the streets
0:27:23 that can put direct violent pressure on politicians.
0:27:26 I mean, that’s a remarkable thing in American history
0:27:31 that you haven’t seen very much as a mass phenomenon
0:27:33 maybe since the 19th century, right?
0:27:36 His mobilization of these images and myths
0:27:39 and propaganda appeal is rousing enough to get people
0:27:41 into the street and to use violence.
0:27:44 And I think that that’s something that’s,
0:27:47 obviously is not always a strength of his.
0:27:48 It turns a lot of people off.
0:27:51 It makes him frightening and makes people not wanna vote
0:27:53 for him and wanna get him out of American public life
0:27:57 entirely, but it’s a source of power in this limited way.
0:28:02 I mean, not many American politicians in the 20th century
0:28:04 have tried to call mobs out into the street.
0:28:06 – Yeah, I always feel this way,
0:28:08 reading someone like Ross Douthit, right?
0:28:11 Who I like and think is very smart.
0:28:15 But like some of these bulwark dispatch types.
0:28:16 – Yeah.
0:28:21 – He seems to think Trump is some unhappy aberration
0:28:23 who can be excised from the conservative movement.
0:28:26 When in fact, if you’re looking clearly,
0:28:31 he is the densest and most perfect expression of it.
0:28:33 – Yeah, I agree.
0:28:36 – I will say this, and I said this before on the show.
0:28:37 I don’t think it’s true necessarily
0:28:42 that most people voted for Trump because they’re racist,
0:28:47 but it is definitely true that Trump’s deep appeal
0:28:51 with lots of people is rooted in resentment and anger
0:28:53 and the joy, quite frankly,
0:28:57 in revolting against the establishment
0:29:00 and the diligent efforts of conservative intellectuals
0:29:03 at the national review or wherever
0:29:06 to impose some intellectual veneer over that
0:29:08 was always ridiculous.
0:29:09 And again, a lot of this stuff,
0:29:14 it does just manifest generally as anti-elite resentment.
0:29:21 I remember talking to Matt Taibe several years ago,
0:29:27 and he said to me in an interview that Trump’s pitch
0:29:31 to voters was basically pull this lever
0:29:32 and you’ll horrify them all.
0:29:33 – Yeah.
0:29:36 And I don’t think anyone has distilled it
0:29:38 any better than that, right?
0:29:41 And the joy that people experience that Trump rallies
0:29:44 is connected to this shared negative solidarity.
0:29:48 And holy hell, is he good at connecting with that energy.
0:29:51 – Yeah, I think he’s unique among politicians
0:29:56 that his capacity to have an organic relationship
0:30:00 with the crowd, they feed off him and he feeds off them.
0:30:01 Who is leading whom?
0:30:03 Are they egging him on or is he egging him on?
0:30:05 It’s a little bit of both, it’s a feedback loop,
0:30:07 it’s an organic process.
0:30:08 – It’s jazz.
0:30:10 – It’s jazz, yeah.
0:30:11 You know, most American politicians,
0:30:14 although they’re quite good at what they do,
0:30:16 don’t have that.
0:30:18 They form messages, they test messages out,
0:30:20 there’s kind of a scientific approach,
0:30:22 but he does it on the fly.
0:30:24 When he’s riffing with the crowd,
0:30:28 like a DJ or like a standup comic,
0:30:30 he’s having a great time and they’re having a great time.
0:30:35 His relationship with the crowd is unique
0:30:39 and not something that many American politicians can do.
0:30:41 Even ones that are quite charismatic
0:30:44 and are great orders, it’s something else.
0:30:47 – This may be too big of a pivot, but whatever.
0:30:51 You know, I’ve always thought of myself as a materialist.
0:30:52 – Yeah.
0:30:54 – You know, I’ve never identified as a Marxist,
0:30:56 but the basic materialist conception of history
0:30:59 always seemed true enough to me.
0:31:01 And there’s a case in the book
0:31:03 and there’s shades of it in this conversation
0:31:08 that the disorder we’re dealing with now is downstream
0:31:11 of all these material and social and economic shifts
0:31:16 that really exploded in the ’80s under Reagan.
0:31:19 And you know, look, there’s always this debate
0:31:21 about how the material world interacts
0:31:23 with the world of ideas.
0:31:25 You know, this is Hegel and Marx and who the hell knows,
0:31:26 right?
0:31:28 I’d be a famous philosopher if I had an answer to that.
0:31:30 But I do wonder what you think.
0:31:32 Even if we waved a magic wand
0:31:35 and radically improved everyone’s material conditions
0:31:36 so that no one really wanted for anything
0:31:39 so that there really wasn’t a material basis
0:31:43 for economic or racial grievances
0:31:47 and there was some modicum of community and solidarity,
0:31:49 how much would it really matter?
0:31:51 Like would politics be all that different today
0:31:54 or would we just keep spinning the same tracks,
0:31:55 the same basic arguments
0:31:59 in an increasingly mediated environment
0:32:03 where our technologies shape our perceptions of the world?
0:32:06 I mean, I just have to believe that it would matter,
0:32:07 but I’m honestly not sure it would matter
0:32:10 nearly as much as we think.
0:32:12 – Like I think the material basis of society
0:32:14 and the way we have these mediated relationships
0:32:17 with each other are not separate.
0:32:22 We are entering a world where what it means
0:32:25 to be a person is quite different
0:32:29 from what it meant in the 20th century.
0:32:32 And our forms of society and association
0:32:34 are changing in radical ways
0:32:36 that are frankly traumatic for people.
0:32:39 I think that we don’t really realize it,
0:32:41 but we’re in touch with each other
0:32:44 in which the other’s thoughts
0:32:46 in ways that were inconceivable.
0:32:49 I mean, we are approaching communal life
0:32:51 in ways that were unimaginable.
0:32:53 I mean, we’re constantly in touch.
0:32:56 You can in a moment hear what other people are thinking
0:32:57 and kind of get a sense of what the whole crowd
0:33:00 and the whole world is thinking through social media.
0:33:02 The effects that that’s having on the human psyche
0:33:04 and the human self,
0:33:07 we have an inkling of what that’s doing to change us
0:33:09 and what a radical change that is,
0:33:12 but I don’t think we’ve quite come to terms with it.
0:33:15 And it’s frightening and it’s creating disruptions
0:33:17 on both the personal and the national
0:33:19 and the international level.
0:33:23 I think that the way we are turned into beings
0:33:26 that produce and consume,
0:33:31 that’s always gonna create tensions in society.
0:33:34 – I mean, isn’t it funny how it’s like,
0:33:35 it doesn’t really matter
0:33:38 which dimension of the problem we’re talking about.
0:33:40 If you trace it back far enough,
0:33:43 you just sort of end up at the doorstep of capitalism.
0:33:46 But you can’t say capitalism is bad, right?
0:33:48 That’s not a very helpful argument.
0:33:49 – I don’t think it’s bad or good.
0:33:53 I mean, I think it’s the way that we organize our society
0:33:55 and the way that we’ve organized our society,
0:33:58 I think has some deep problems
0:34:01 and the echoes and reverberations of those problems
0:34:04 are not always recognized as coming from that route.
0:34:06 With that being said,
0:34:07 there’s another problem which is just
0:34:09 to look at every social problem
0:34:12 which probably has fixes that are more local and easy.
0:34:13 And just to throw your hands up and say,
0:34:15 well, that’s the nature of capitalism.
0:34:16 There’s nothing we can do about it
0:34:18 until we get rid of capitalism.
0:34:20 I don’t think that’s helpful either.
0:34:23 I do believe there are institutions,
0:34:24 there are fixes,
0:34:28 there are ways people can alter their lives
0:34:32 and create new ways of being with themselves
0:34:36 and another that preserve and protect one
0:34:39 from some of those disrupting and dissolving forces.
0:34:44 But yeah, I think ultimately we are at the mercy
0:34:47 of the way our society produces and reproduces.
0:34:48 You gotta get a job.
0:34:50 And if you don’t, you’re gonna be in trouble
0:34:51 in some one way or the other.
0:34:54 But yeah, I think any serious thinking
0:34:58 about who we are as a society
0:35:00 has to start with those basic realities.
0:35:02 – I guess I wonder where you think
0:35:04 American politics is heading.
0:35:06 And I’m not asking the banal,
0:35:08 are you optimistic or pessimistic question.
0:35:10 I’m thinking more about where these currents
0:35:12 are taking us, right?
0:35:14 The right is obviously what it is right now.
0:35:17 And I think the left is adrift in its own way.
0:35:19 But what’s your sense of where we’re going
0:35:22 in the short to medium term?
0:35:25 – I’m very concerned across the world
0:35:29 that this kind of nationalism is ascendant
0:35:32 in a way that’s very difficult to stop.
0:35:35 We’ve seen the surge of right-wing nationalism in Europe
0:35:37 where that’s heading could be very frightening.
0:35:40 We’ve seen Trump not losing popularity
0:35:42 after his manifest criminality
0:35:44 in his attempt to overthrow the government,
0:35:46 maybe losing some popularity.
0:35:48 What I’m concerned about is that this increasing
0:35:53 fragmentation of the world into these antagonistic groups
0:36:00 is setting the groundwork for a war, a global war.
0:36:05 And we already see the hints of that in Ukraine,
0:36:09 in Israel, in Palestine, where these nationalist wars
0:36:11 are taking place.
0:36:15 What I am very concerned about now
0:36:20 is that that tendency will intensify and increase.
0:36:21 I’m not saying we’re heading towards
0:36:23 a third world war necessarily,
0:36:25 but I would say if my big worry is
0:36:26 in the direction of the world,
0:36:28 obviously that’s the biggest one.
0:36:38 – After one more short break,
0:36:41 what can we learn about the present and the future
0:36:43 by looking back at the ’90s?
0:36:44 Stay with us.
0:36:47 (dramatic music)
0:37:06 – I think both of us believe the American right
0:37:09 really recognized something deep and true
0:37:12 about the country after the Cold War.
0:37:14 They had this Schmittian sense of the need
0:37:16 for a new political enemy.
0:37:19 And the left, perhaps because this is just the nature
0:37:23 of the left, didn’t or couldn’t do that,
0:37:24 which was fine at the time.
0:37:26 Again, Bill Clinton served two terms.
0:37:29 But from our perch in 2024,
0:37:31 do you think the left missed an opportunity
0:37:34 to redefine themselves and the country during this time?
0:37:37 Or is this something the left just wasn’t equipped,
0:37:38 isn’t equipped to do?
0:37:39 – I don’t know.
0:37:42 They were so defeated by first Reagan,
0:37:44 the end of the Cold War also seemed
0:37:46 to really discredit socialism.
0:37:49 I think it was just as such a time
0:37:54 when the left was not able to articulate a vision
0:37:55 of the future.
0:37:57 And I think it’s still struggling.
0:37:58 I think it’s pretty weak.
0:38:00 And I think that’s why we have,
0:38:02 nationalism is so strong.
0:38:05 The left is supposed to be the side giving the story
0:38:08 of collectivism and solidarity.
0:38:10 And nationalism provides a story about that.
0:38:12 That’s a lot more appealing to a lot of people
0:38:14 than anything the left has had to offer.
0:38:16 And that’s unfortunate.
0:38:19 I don’t know how to solve that problem.
0:38:22 The left has to take nationalism seriously.
0:38:24 It once did.
0:38:28 Liberals are concerned about the rise of nationalism.
0:38:31 I think it’s the most destructive ideology
0:38:35 that man has ever come up with.
0:38:40 And when it turns into a racial versions of it unspeakable
0:38:42 and what it can do, with that being said,
0:38:45 it has deep emotional appeals to people
0:38:48 that are long-term in abiding.
0:38:52 And that needs to be taken seriously and analyzed
0:38:54 and thought about, not just said, well,
0:38:57 this is either backwards or is gonna fade away
0:38:59 off its own accord.
0:39:02 Yeah, there is no technocratic means
0:39:06 of circumnavigating the primacy of myth
0:39:11 and identity and tribal passions in human beings.
0:39:15 It’s just written into our codes, as it were.
0:39:16 The right is certainly just more tuned to that
0:39:19 for a variety of reasons and very, very good
0:39:21 at weaponizing that, at pathologizing it.
0:39:24 Yeah, I think that the liberals became very technocratic
0:39:28 and very focused on policy and statistics and so forth.
0:39:32 And as Cuomo says, you campaign in poetry
0:39:33 and you govern in prose.
0:39:37 And I think that, we are missing the poetry a little bit
0:39:42 and unfortunately, the right is better at it right now.
0:39:47 Counterfactuals are often pointless, but they are fun.
0:39:50 And I guess I occasionally wonder
0:39:54 where we would be right now politically
0:39:59 if George W. Bush and the forever wars never happened.
0:40:02 Yeah, I’m not sure we have enough distance truly
0:40:04 from that period to know, but I don’t know.
0:40:06 What do you think?
0:40:07 Well, here’s what I’ll say about that,
0:40:10 is that I think that it was always one possibility
0:40:12 that the Republicans tried to trot out
0:40:15 for the problems of national unity we’ve discovered.
0:40:18 And also for economic problems was to try to start a war.
0:40:20 So I think that that was always a lurking political
0:40:23 possibility that Republicans really believed in.
0:40:24 So it might not have happened then,
0:40:25 but they would have given a shot
0:40:28 and then its failures would have become manifest.
0:40:30 So in the era that I write about,
0:40:33 the Gulf War happens, it’s a great success,
0:40:35 but its success is not very lasting.
0:40:38 Why didn’t the war create the sense of national unity
0:40:39 that it was supposed to?
0:40:40 It was very popular.
0:40:43 People said we’ve cured the Vietnam syndrome,
0:40:46 but then it doesn’t really last.
0:40:49 And the same thing, the war on terror,
0:40:51 there’s, of course, we have the failures of Vietnam.
0:40:54 I mean, the failures, I’m sorry, telling.
0:40:57 The failures of Iraq, the failures in Afghanistan,
0:40:59 these are ambivalent results.
0:41:02 But, you know, the national project of uniting
0:41:05 in face of a common enemy didn’t even work.
0:41:10 So I think that the wars contributed to where we’re at,
0:41:13 but I also just think that war as a tool
0:41:16 of national unification is limited,
0:41:19 especially when it doesn’t involve mass mobilization.
0:41:23 – I remember reading people like, you know, Alan Bloom
0:41:26 or Christopher Lash in college and thinking, you know,
0:41:31 this is just kind of boilerplate conservative nostalgia.
0:41:32 – Right.
0:41:33 – But I don’t know.
0:41:37 I think sometimes I do wonder if maybe the concerns
0:41:42 about nihilism and the dead end of liberal individualism
0:41:47 were more justified than people like me wanted to believe.
0:41:51 – There is a sense, I think there was a broad sense
0:41:54 of revulsion or boredom or something
0:41:56 with anything that comes along
0:41:59 that promises some kind of social answer
0:42:02 and nothing seems to really, really furrowing.
0:42:05 Maybe they were not emphasizing the right parts
0:42:07 of the problem.
0:42:13 There is a certain sourness and a certain, yeah, nihilism
0:42:18 or inability for things to be really believed in
0:42:23 wholeheartedly that feels pervasive and continuing.
0:42:26 And the only things that seem to be getting people’s
0:42:30 passionate, you know, devotion are quite negative.
0:42:32 – There’s a lot to take away
0:42:34 from this excellent book, truly.
0:42:38 But the message, as I understand it and correct me
0:42:42 if I’m wrong, really is that we should pay closer attention
0:42:46 to the stuff that seems kooky or marginal in the moment
0:42:50 because, you know, often today’s fringe is tomorrow’s
0:42:54 mainstream and if that’s the case, I gotta say
0:42:58 I’m not super pumped about tomorrow, John.
0:43:01 – What you just articulated as one of the key messages
0:43:04 or what I wanted the book to help people
0:43:07 how to interpret politics, how to interpret the present
0:43:08 is exactly right.
0:43:11 But I don’t want this to instill a sense of hopelessness
0:43:14 to people at all because I also think there’s a lot
0:43:15 of contingency.
0:43:17 A lot of things can change and a lot of things can happen.
0:43:21 I mean, I don’t think it’s inevitable that we end up
0:43:24 with this kind of ruler or that kind of ruler.
0:43:28 The talents of politicians, just the absolute chaos
0:43:30 of the world, these things matter.
0:43:34 Events take place that change things rapidly.
0:43:35 You know, contingencies happen.
0:43:37 So I don’t want it to be like,
0:43:39 this is a message of doom and gloom.
0:43:43 It’s just that these things are out there.
0:43:44 They shouldn’t be ignored.
0:43:48 They have power, but they don’t have infinite power.
0:43:49 Nothing does.
0:43:52 Everything falls apart for good and bad, you know?
0:43:55 And everything ends and other things begin.
0:43:59 So I don’t think it’s a prophecy of doom in any way.
0:44:02 I think it’s just to take seriously sometimes
0:44:04 the things that are not taken seriously.
0:44:05 – Yeah, that’s a good note to end on.
0:44:08 Again, that book really is great.
0:44:09 – Thank you so much.
0:44:12 – And your newsletter on Substack on Popular Front
0:44:14 is among the sharpest and most probing things
0:44:16 being written about politics.
0:44:17 I also would highly recommend that.
0:44:19 – I really appreciate that, Trump.
0:44:20 – And yeah, this chat was, for me,
0:44:22 at least a long time coming
0:44:23 ’cause I’ve been reading you for a while.
0:44:25 And I’m glad I finally got you on the show.
0:44:28 So thanks.
0:44:28 – Yeah, thank you.
0:44:30 This is really great.
0:44:42 – So yeah, that was fun.
0:44:45 That conversation ended up being a little bit more
0:44:48 about Trump than I anticipated.
0:44:52 Unfortunately, Trump just sort of swallows everything.
0:44:56 But yeah, as always, let me know what you think.
0:44:59 I read those emails, I try to respond to all of them.
0:45:03 Drop us a line at thegrayarea@vox.com.
0:45:05 And if you don’t have time to do that,
0:45:08 you do have time to rate, review, subscribe.
0:45:09 So do that.
0:45:14 – This episode was produced by John Arons,
0:45:16 edited by Jorge Just,
0:45:18 engineered by Patrick Boyd,
0:45:20 fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
0:45:23 and Alex Ovington wrote our theme music.
0:45:25 New episodes of the Gray Area Drop on Mondays,
0:45:27 listen and subscribe.
0:45:29 This show is part of VOX.
0:45:31 Support VOX’s journalism
0:45:33 by joining our membership program today.
0:45:36 Go to vox.com/members to sign up.
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0:01:04 (upbeat music)
0:01:07 – If you were to write the history
0:01:10 of modern American conservatism,
0:01:12 where would you start?
0:01:15 I mean, obviously you’d start with a half leader
0:01:17 of the cheapest bourbon available,
0:01:20 but after that, what’s step two?
0:01:23 Maybe start somewhere in the 1930s,
0:01:26 just before World War II?
0:01:30 Or maybe you begin with the Cold War and anti-communism.
0:01:33 Cases can be made for both of those entry points,
0:01:37 but one fascinating moment in this whole history
0:01:39 is the early ’90s.
0:01:47 The question is, why?
0:01:51 What the hell happened in the ’90s?
0:01:54 A period of relative peace and stability
0:01:57 that was so consequential,
0:01:58 and why did so many people
0:02:01 miss the significance of this at the time?
0:02:06 I’m Sean Elling,
0:02:08 and this is the Gray Area.
0:02:11 (upbeat music)
0:02:25 Today’s guest is John Gans.
0:02:28 He’s the writer of the newsletter “Unpopular Front,”
0:02:31 and the author of a new book called “When the Clock Broke.”
0:02:37 There’s no Rosetta Stone for understanding Trump,
0:02:40 and it’s not quite right to call this book
0:02:43 a prehistory of Trumpism,
0:02:44 but it does something better
0:02:47 than any other work I’ve encountered,
0:02:50 which is to give some kind of shape
0:02:53 to the sense of despair and resentment
0:02:56 that’s come to define our politics.
0:03:02 Gans does this by looking backwards to 1992 specifically,
0:03:04 Bill Clinton.
0:03:06 – The end of the Cold War
0:03:08 and the beginning of the next century.
0:03:09 – Rush Limbaugh.
0:03:11 – Liberals, I believe, have destroyed
0:03:12 or in the process of destroying
0:03:14 the culture of this country.
0:03:15 – David Duke.
0:03:17 – I think there is racism going on today,
0:03:18 except now it’s being exercised
0:03:20 against the white majority.
0:03:21 – John Gotti.
0:03:22 – You don’t know if I get there,
0:03:24 it’s kicking you good for me.
0:03:25 – It’s all there,
0:03:30 and it all looks, in retrospect, a lot like today.
0:03:32 And you can draw, if you look,
0:03:34 a straight line from that period
0:03:35 to the present.
0:03:39 So I invited John onto the show to walk me through it.
0:03:45 John Gans, welcome to the show.
0:03:47 – Oh, it’s so great to be here, Sean, thanks.
0:03:48 – We’re gonna work our way to Trump.
0:03:50 Unfortunately, we have to.
0:03:54 But let’s start with the year 1992,
0:03:58 which isn’t the beginning of the movement
0:03:59 that led to Trump,
0:04:04 but it was a significant moment in that movement.
0:04:07 – What the hell happened in 1992?
0:04:10 Why is that the entry point for you?
0:04:12 – Well, a bunch of different things.
0:04:14 The two-party system got its strongest challenge
0:04:17 from a third-party candidate for almost 100 years, right?
0:04:18 In the form of Ross Perot.
0:04:23 The Republican Party got a very strong challenge
0:04:24 from its right flank
0:04:28 that arguably wounded its candidate,
0:04:31 an incumbent who had come off a successful war,
0:04:35 who you might think would be a shoo-in to win reelection,
0:04:37 but lost partially because he was wounded
0:04:40 by this insurgency from the right in his own party.
0:04:44 You’ve got the worst civil disorder since the Civil War,
0:04:47 some people say, in the LA riots.
0:04:50 In 1991, in Louisiana,
0:04:52 a neo-Nazi runs for governor
0:04:55 and does surprisingly well for someone with that background.
0:04:58 And that excites a lot of the people
0:05:00 who want to primary Bush
0:05:02 and are looking for a way to push American politics
0:05:03 to the right.
0:05:05 You also have the country in the aftermath
0:05:08 of a pretty nasty recession
0:05:13 brought about by the popping of a few financial bubbles
0:05:14 in commercial real estate
0:05:19 and with some kind of dodgy new forms of financial instrument
0:05:22 that at first seemed to promise infinite wealth
0:05:24 and prosperity on Wall Street
0:05:28 and then turned out to be a speculative bubble.
0:05:32 Also, the popularity of a new form of media, talk radio,
0:05:36 which a lot of people are responding to,
0:05:37 are very enthusiastic about,
0:05:39 and a lot of people are very uneasy
0:05:41 with what’s being said on talk radio and the tone of it,
0:05:46 which is quite angry, alienated, even hateful.
0:05:47 So these are some of the things
0:05:51 that are kind of churning in that year.
0:05:55 – It’s worth holding for a few minutes on David Duke.
0:05:59 – Sure. – He’s so cartoonish
0:06:00 in so many ways that it’s hard to believe
0:06:05 he’s a real person, but he is unfortunately very real.
0:06:07 What’s worth knowing about him?
0:06:10 Why is he a significant character in this story?
0:06:15 – David Duke was known in American life for a while
0:06:16 before the 1990s
0:06:20 because he was kind of the public face of the Klan
0:06:22 and neo-Nazism in America.
0:06:27 But he had been largely a kind of political failure
0:06:32 as attempts to run for office were always unsuccessful
0:06:35 until the end of the 1980s
0:06:39 when he runs and becomes a state legislator in Louisiana.
0:06:44 And what’s notable about Duke is that he runs as a Republican.
0:06:46 The establishment of the Republican Party,
0:06:50 both on the state and the national level, does not like this,
0:06:53 throws a lot of effort into trying to stop him
0:06:54 in all his races.
0:06:55 He runs for state legislator wins.
0:06:57 He runs for Senate and loses.
0:06:59 And then he runs for governor and loses.
0:07:01 They throw a lot of resources at him.
0:07:04 And he really bedevils this establishment
0:07:08 has an extremely loyal core constituency
0:07:09 that sticks with him,
0:07:11 even though the president of the United States
0:07:14 is making radio ads against him,
0:07:17 even though the RNC is sending people down there to fight him.
0:07:21 He attracts this anti-establishment energy,
0:07:22 which is very powerful.
0:07:25 And when he runs for governor of Louisiana
0:07:27 and he loses in a landslide,
0:07:29 but he wins a majority of the white vote.
0:07:30 Yeah.
0:07:33 And this makes a lot of people’s ears perk up,
0:07:37 particularly people to the right of Ronald Reagan
0:07:39 and to the right of George H.W. Bush,
0:07:42 who see in David Dukes the difficulty
0:07:45 that the establishment of the Republican Party
0:07:48 had in fighting off David Dukes insurgency
0:07:50 as a hopeful sign that the time
0:07:52 for their own politics had arrived.
0:07:54 Yeah, just a fun fact.
0:07:59 I lived in Louisiana for about a decade.
0:08:03 And I saw Duke in person one time up close
0:08:07 at the state Capitol and good Lord.
0:08:10 I mean, he really did look like an alien
0:08:12 wearing a human meat suit.
0:08:13 You know what I mean?
0:08:14 Yeah.
0:08:16 Well, that’s a lot of bad plastic surgery.
0:08:17 Yeah.
0:08:19 You know, that’s funny that the facelift
0:08:22 is kind of an apt metaphor of David Dukes’ career
0:08:25 because he’s attempted to give himself these facelifts
0:08:27 that would make him more attractive to the public
0:08:30 and never quite entirely been able to bury
0:08:32 or wanted to bury because that’s who he is
0:08:35 and what his politics are about, the Nazi past.
0:08:39 But it’s a remarkable that in 1992,
0:08:42 the war was still very much in living memory.
0:08:45 But, you know, to have somebody who claimed to be formally
0:08:49 but was really still a Nazi have this measure
0:08:50 of political success.
0:08:52 And it wasn’t just local.
0:08:54 A lot of people across the country
0:08:57 seem to be responding to his message.
0:08:58 That’s right.
0:09:02 And certainly one lesson that other conservatives drew
0:09:06 correctly from the Duke phenomenon
0:09:09 was that these old Republican cliches
0:09:13 about taxes and the economy and the rest of it
0:09:16 really cease to matter to a lot of their actual voters
0:09:17 if they ever mattered at all.
0:09:19 And Duke exposed that.
0:09:21 There’s a certain type of conservative
0:09:22 that refused to see this.
0:09:23 I’m sure we’ll get to that.
0:09:26 But that was revelatory for a lot of conservatives.
0:09:29 Yeah, I mean, one of the main figures of my book
0:09:32 who was kind of the, I don’t know,
0:09:35 maybe the John the Baptist of Trumpism.
0:09:38 One might say, Sam Francis says liberals
0:09:41 keep on saying David Duke is the natural result
0:09:43 of Reaganism, and they’re right.
0:09:46 But Reaganism is not about democracy.
0:09:47 It’s not about free trade.
0:09:49 It’s not about low taxes.
0:09:52 It’s about a certain part of the American population,
0:09:55 the oldest core of the American civilization,
0:09:57 feeling a sense of dispossession
0:10:00 and beginning to fight back against that dispossession
0:10:02 and the political emergence of David Duke
0:10:05 as a logical progression of that.
0:10:08 And Duke made something like an effort to downplay
0:10:12 or sidestep his Nazi past.
0:10:15 Yes, but it’s worth just for perspective.
0:10:17 How successful was he at that?
0:10:19 Or was it more of like just a bit of a hoodwink?
0:10:22 And how much support did he actually acquire
0:10:25 both locally and nationally, just so people know?
0:10:28 Well, he was able to win 55% of the white vote
0:10:31 who either didn’t care or were satisfied
0:10:33 with his disavows of his Nazi past, of course.
0:10:35 And they were rather thin
0:10:39 because activists were able to go to his legislative office
0:10:41 and buy Nazi books, which they were selling on.
0:10:43 And he was still part of an organization
0:10:45 called the National Association
0:10:46 for the Advancement of White People.
0:10:48 So if you scratched it all,
0:10:53 this disavowal of Nazism was the thinnest of facades.
0:10:56 But his rhetoric in certain ways has to make peace
0:11:00 with certain kind of egalitarian cliches
0:11:02 you would expect most normal politicians to say,
0:11:06 “I just want an equal shot for everybody,”
0:11:09 but playing up that whites were discriminated against.
0:11:12 In a lot of ways, it’s remarkable,
0:11:14 not just on race, but on other issues.
0:11:18 His rhetoric is a lot more sedate than say Donald Trump.
0:11:19 Oh yeah.
0:11:20 Donald Trump gets away with saying things
0:11:22 that David Duke would not dare
0:11:23 and wouldn’t have got away with
0:11:26 in a tone that David Duke wouldn’t have taken.
0:11:30 So he was able to portray himself
0:11:32 because of Republicans had already moved
0:11:34 quite far to the right under Reagan
0:11:36 as a conservative Republican,
0:11:39 maybe with certain emphases
0:11:41 that they weren’t quite comfortable with making,
0:11:43 but then could kind of hide back
0:11:46 under the mantle of Reaganism and conservatism.
0:11:49 It’s strange, there’s something quite amphibian about Duke.
0:11:54 He can appear extremely conventional, even banal.
0:11:57 And at other times that mask slips
0:12:01 and you really see, okay, the core of his politics
0:12:03 that politics are basically about a race war
0:12:05 remain in place.
0:12:08 It was almost kind of advantageous for him in that way.
0:12:10 There’s really no need for him to even dog whistle
0:12:12 when you know his past, right?
0:12:13 I mean, it’s very clear
0:12:15 like who he is and where he’s coming from.
0:12:16 He doesn’t have to say it.
0:12:17 Yeah, not so much.
0:12:20 I mean, he does, but he talks
0:12:22 in the Argo of Republican politicians
0:12:26 at the time, welfare, quotas, affirmative action.
0:12:28 Now, this is around the time
0:12:33 another prominent figure, less marginal, enters the chat.
0:12:34 And this is Pat Buchanan,
0:12:37 who really sees him an opportunity here.
0:12:38 Yeah.
0:12:39 Tell me about that.
0:12:42 So Pat Buchanan, I mean, I’m sure your listeners
0:12:44 are familiar with the name.
0:12:47 He was one of America’s most prominent conservatives.
0:12:49 He had worked in two White Houses.
0:12:50 He worked in the Nixon White House.
0:12:53 He had a quite close relationship with Richard Nixon.
0:12:55 He worked in the Reagan White House.
0:12:59 He was very admiring also of Ronald Reagan.
0:13:00 He was a media figure.
0:13:02 He appeared on cable news.
0:13:04 He was a syndicated columnist.
0:13:08 And Pat Buchanan said the biggest vacuum
0:13:12 in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan.
0:13:14 And he sought to occupy that vacuum.
0:13:16 And he and some of the writers
0:13:18 and intellectuals who surrounded him
0:13:22 saw David Duke as being the signal
0:13:23 that the time had come for him
0:13:25 to launch his own political ambitions.
0:13:27 So he launches a campaign
0:13:30 emulating a lot of the appeals and issues
0:13:33 of David Duke to primary Bush.
0:13:37 But there are things that you would see later
0:13:39 in the Trumpian turn,
0:13:43 a dissatisfaction with foreign interventionism,
0:13:48 a return to kind of pre-war isolationist ideas,
0:13:53 protectionism and embrace of nationalism.
0:13:54 And this nationalism is very different
0:13:59 from the kind of patriotism that George H.W. Bush
0:14:01 as this veteran of World War II
0:14:04 portrayed himself as standing for.
0:14:09 So Buchanan also speaks the language of the extreme right.
0:14:12 But in a muted way,
0:14:14 he familiarizes himself with it.
0:14:17 He knows it, but he’s an establishment figure
0:14:19 in a lot of ways and gets away with it.
0:14:22 – So there’s all this anger bubbling up
0:14:26 and Duke and Buchanan become the faces of it.
0:14:30 And it’s a little ugly, but it still feels contained.
0:14:32 Bill Clinton, a centrist Democrat,
0:14:35 he wins the presidential election,
0:14:37 the economy improves.
0:14:40 And I was too young to have any kind of political consciousness
0:14:43 back then, but I assume the establishment figured
0:14:47 at that point that all that sound and fury
0:14:49 was just a weird flash bang,
0:14:50 but nothing to worry about anymore.
0:14:51 It’s all good.
0:14:53 The DC machine’s just gonna keep on rolling.
0:14:55 But that’s obviously not what happened, right?
0:14:57 All this shit goes underground,
0:14:58 burrows into the culture,
0:15:00 and then it just keeps festering.
0:15:03 – Yeah, I say that political establishment failed
0:15:04 or had certain fails or imagination
0:15:06 or tactics or strategy in the book,
0:15:08 but it is true that they did adapt.
0:15:13 First of all, Clinton’s appeal was definitely designed
0:15:14 and succeeded in winning back
0:15:16 some of the so-called Reagan Democrats.
0:15:20 The Republicans paid very close attention to Ross Perot.
0:15:22 So they did adapt,
0:15:24 but I don’t think that they really understood
0:15:26 the depths these forces represented
0:15:28 and thought that in their adaptation,
0:15:30 they had contained them or diffused them.
0:15:34 It took a long time for this stuff to reassert itself,
0:15:36 the 1990s.
0:15:39 But you know, Bob Dole is the nominee in 1996,
0:15:42 although Pepe Kanan wins the state,
0:15:47 and Ross Perot is unable to recreate
0:15:49 the kind of magic he had.
0:15:50 But in a way, they doubled down
0:15:52 on a lot of the same problems
0:15:55 that gave rise to the anger in the first place.
0:15:57 You have during the Reagan 80s,
0:15:59 a lot of deregulation of finance
0:16:01 that leads to speculative bubbles,
0:16:03 like the savings and loan crisis,
0:16:06 a big Wall Street crash,
0:16:08 commercial real estate boom and crash.
0:16:12 And the consensus doesn’t really change
0:16:15 that, okay, well, we need to bring Wall Street back to heel.
0:16:18 It’s like, no, this pattern of deregulation
0:16:20 of Wall Street of financial institutions
0:16:22 continues and even intensifies.
0:16:25 There’s also free trade in the 80s
0:16:28 is causing a lot of disruption, globalization,
0:16:29 deindustrialization, all of these things
0:16:31 are causing disruption.
0:16:34 And these policies are not abandoned.
0:16:37 They are altered, they are softened in some cases,
0:16:40 but in other cases, they’re intensified and pursued harder.
0:16:44 So then when the big one comes in 2008,
0:16:47 the political forces that unleashes
0:16:51 are even more radical or more acute and intense
0:16:54 than the ones that you saw in the early 90s.
0:16:55 – What we’re really talking about here
0:16:59 is this kind of transition of the Republican Party
0:17:01 from the party of Reagan
0:17:03 to eventually the party of Trump.
0:17:06 And you mentioned Sam Francis a few minutes ago.
0:17:09 Now, he’s someone, I suspect most people
0:17:11 have never heard of, but do you argue
0:17:13 that he did as much as anyone
0:17:16 to facilitate or accelerate this transition?
0:17:21 Who was he and what really did he see in the electorate
0:17:24 that other conservatives at the time couldn’t or wouldn’t?
0:17:27 – Sam Francis was a Republican staffer.
0:17:30 He comes out of the South.
0:17:32 He works for the Heritage Foundation,
0:17:34 which was kind of the think tank created
0:17:36 to create a policy infrastructure
0:17:38 for the conservative movement.
0:17:40 He works as a Senate staffer.
0:17:42 I mean, to say he’s part of the conservative movement
0:17:44 is right nominally,
0:17:47 but he doesn’t consider himself a conservative.
0:17:50 He considers himself a man of the radical right.
0:17:54 He believes essentially that there’s nothing left to conserve,
0:17:56 that the institutions are too corrupted,
0:17:58 they’re too overtaken by liberalism,
0:18:01 and that they must be overthrown.
0:18:04 A new order must be established
0:18:07 that is a reactionary social agenda,
0:18:10 but does not preserve much of the old ways of doing things,
0:18:13 which he thinks are hopelessly liberal.
0:18:15 – So a counter-revolution, basically.
0:18:18 – A counter-revolution needs to take place.
0:18:21 There needs to be a populist, Caesarist presidency
0:18:23 that uses the power of the president
0:18:26 to kind of smash the enemies of middle American radicals
0:18:30 as he calls them and reconfigure the economy
0:18:33 and the moral and intellectual state of the United States
0:18:35 in the favor of their interests.
0:18:40 So he has this radical authoritarian populist vision
0:18:44 for the direction of the conservative movement
0:18:45 in the American right.
0:18:50 – One big thing he recognizes is,
0:18:52 and boy is this still relevant,
0:18:56 is how much regular people around the country
0:19:00 really, really came to despise the ruling elites.
0:19:01 – Oh yes.
0:19:03 – And this is a kind of energy
0:19:06 that these figures really channeled.
0:19:06 – Absolutely.
0:19:09 I think what differentiates what I’m talking about
0:19:11 from the conservatism that came before
0:19:14 basically is part and parcel of that rejection of elites
0:19:17 as the ideologies associated with elites
0:19:22 that there were some kind of impersonal institutions
0:19:25 that would provide a fair break
0:19:26 or an opportunities for people.
0:19:30 From on the left, that was kind of features
0:19:32 of social democracy, the welfare state,
0:19:34 what was left of it after Reagan,
0:19:37 trying to create more egalitarian parts of economic life,
0:19:40 access to education, access to healthcare, those things.
0:19:43 On the right, it’s a belief in the market
0:19:45 and the belief that basically,
0:19:47 if we let the market do what it needs to do,
0:19:51 everyone will have a crack, people will find their niche
0:19:53 and if unchained market forces
0:19:55 will have almost utopian outcomes,
0:19:58 of course, none of that happens.
0:20:01 Society remains highly competitive,
0:20:02 people’s lives are very precarious,
0:20:04 they fall through the cracks,
0:20:08 they fear social decline, they experience social decline.
0:20:13 So these stories, these ideologies about the rules of society
0:20:17 that would permit people to have prosperous lives,
0:20:20 if you just obey them and follow these norms,
0:20:22 don’t appear convincing to people.
0:20:25 And then people who come along and say,
0:20:28 well, I’m not gonna sell you any of that bullshit.
0:20:32 We, the nation, the family, the race, whatever,
0:20:34 some bounded or smaller group,
0:20:36 need to face the fact that society’s unfair
0:20:38 and we’re going to take an unfair advantage
0:20:42 and we’re going to band together to get ours
0:20:45 and we’re gonna make sure that you, if you’re with us,
0:20:46 get the spoils.
0:20:54 – After a short break,
0:20:57 how did we go from David Duke and Pat Buchanan
0:20:59 to Donald Trump?
0:20:59 Stay with us.
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0:23:45 – Basically every home in America has a refrigerator.
0:23:48 I mean, you have to have at least one refrigerator
0:23:49 if not more, right?
0:23:51 How else are you gonna keep your food fresh long enough
0:23:53 so you actually eat it?
0:23:55 Not necessarily.
0:23:56 This episode of “Gastropod,”
0:23:58 how the future of refrigeration
0:24:01 might not involve refrigeration at all.
0:24:02 – These are untreated lemons.
0:24:05 So this is eight weeks old and these are the same age.
0:24:07 So these are treated and these are untreated.
0:24:07 – That’s nuts.
0:24:08 – Yeah.
0:24:09 – I mean, look at them.
0:24:10 – Pepper’s the same thing.
0:24:11 So untreated and then these are treated
0:24:13 and they’re both the same age.
0:24:15 You should feel it actually.
0:24:16 I mean, they’re solid.
0:24:18 – Bell peppers nearly as good as new
0:24:20 after eight weeks at room temperature.
0:24:22 This is a new technology that could help address
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0:24:32 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24:46 – You know, it is sort of amazing how
0:24:50 we just kind of all basically forgot
0:24:55 that Trump lunged into national politics with birtherism.
0:24:59 That was his thing.
0:25:01 That was his opening gambit.
0:25:04 And you could argue it was the most deliberate move
0:25:06 he’s made as a politician.
0:25:08 I mean, again, this is partly what makes
0:25:12 the incessant revisionism of Trump or conservatives so silly.
0:25:15 It’s like, “Hey, fellas, I get that you want
0:25:17 conservatism to have a serious intellectual foundation.”
0:25:21 But this guy staked his whole political identity
0:25:23 on a conspiracy about our first black president
0:25:25 being born in Kenya.
0:25:27 This isn’t a footnote.
0:25:29 – No, I totally agree.
0:25:31 And I think that that really says it all.
0:25:34 And I’ve always said that there’s one single myth
0:25:37 underlying ideal of Trumpism,
0:25:39 which is that certain Americans aren’t really Americans.
0:25:42 It was first articulated in birtherism.
0:25:46 He knew more than other Republican elites
0:25:49 that that’s what the message of the Tea Party really was.
0:25:51 Other conservative and Republican elites said,
0:25:52 “Oh, it’s about taxes.
0:25:55 It’s about entitlement reform, all this BS.”
0:25:58 He said, “No, no, no, Obama is not the president.
0:25:59 He’s not a citizen.
0:26:00 Some people aren’t citizens.
0:26:04 People who don’t look like us act, think like us, et cetera.”
0:26:06 And then that takes on a different manifestation
0:26:08 in the stolen election myth.
0:26:09 What does that say?
0:26:10 Well, roughly the same thing.
0:26:12 Certain people aren’t really Americans.
0:26:14 Their votes don’t count.
0:26:16 You, the real citizenry,
0:26:18 are being disenfranchised and dispossessed.
0:26:23 The actual facts of the matter don’t matter that much.
0:26:26 What is being peddled here is a myth.
0:26:31 It’s a way of conceiving of a certain social vision,
0:26:33 not a statement about facts.
0:26:35 It’s something more primal.
0:26:38 Trump is that myth incarnate.
0:26:42 – Yeah, and the continuous cluelessness
0:26:45 of conservative intellectuals about all of this
0:26:47 is pretty extraordinary.
0:26:51 I mean, they had and continue to have
0:26:55 the same delusion with Trump that they’ve always had,
0:26:58 which is that we can ride this tiger of popular rage
0:27:02 and use it to channel our own plutocratic fantasies,
0:27:04 even though they have nothing in common
0:27:06 with the people they’re mobilizing.
0:27:08 And eventually that train was always gonna
0:27:10 careen off the tracks.
0:27:12 – Yeah, and I think that that tiger will bite them.
0:27:13 – And it has.
0:27:14 I mean, they’re really playing with fire.
0:27:15 Let’s face it.
0:27:19 I mean, Trump is able to mobilize a mob in the streets
0:27:23 that can put direct violent pressure on politicians.
0:27:26 I mean, that’s a remarkable thing in American history
0:27:31 that you haven’t seen very much as a mass phenomenon
0:27:33 maybe since the 19th century, right?
0:27:36 His mobilization of these images and myths
0:27:39 and propaganda appeal is rousing enough to get people
0:27:41 into the street and to use violence.
0:27:44 And I think that that’s something that’s,
0:27:47 obviously is not always a strength of his.
0:27:48 It turns a lot of people off.
0:27:51 It makes him frightening and makes people not wanna vote
0:27:53 for him and wanna get him out of American public life
0:27:57 entirely, but it’s a source of power in this limited way.
0:28:02 I mean, not many American politicians in the 20th century
0:28:04 have tried to call mobs out into the street.
0:28:06 – Yeah, I always feel this way,
0:28:08 reading someone like Ross Douthit, right?
0:28:11 Who I like and think is very smart.
0:28:15 But like some of these bulwark dispatch types.
0:28:16 – Yeah.
0:28:21 – He seems to think Trump is some unhappy aberration
0:28:23 who can be excised from the conservative movement.
0:28:26 When in fact, if you’re looking clearly,
0:28:31 he is the densest and most perfect expression of it.
0:28:33 – Yeah, I agree.
0:28:36 – I will say this, and I said this before on the show.
0:28:37 I don’t think it’s true necessarily
0:28:42 that most people voted for Trump because they’re racist,
0:28:47 but it is definitely true that Trump’s deep appeal
0:28:51 with lots of people is rooted in resentment and anger
0:28:53 and the joy, quite frankly,
0:28:57 in revolting against the establishment
0:29:00 and the diligent efforts of conservative intellectuals
0:29:03 at the national review or wherever
0:29:06 to impose some intellectual veneer over that
0:29:08 was always ridiculous.
0:29:09 And again, a lot of this stuff,
0:29:14 it does just manifest generally as anti-elite resentment.
0:29:21 I remember talking to Matt Taibe several years ago,
0:29:27 and he said to me in an interview that Trump’s pitch
0:29:31 to voters was basically pull this lever
0:29:32 and you’ll horrify them all.
0:29:33 – Yeah.
0:29:36 And I don’t think anyone has distilled it
0:29:38 any better than that, right?
0:29:41 And the joy that people experience that Trump rallies
0:29:44 is connected to this shared negative solidarity.
0:29:48 And holy hell, is he good at connecting with that energy.
0:29:51 – Yeah, I think he’s unique among politicians
0:29:56 that his capacity to have an organic relationship
0:30:00 with the crowd, they feed off him and he feeds off them.
0:30:01 Who is leading whom?
0:30:03 Are they egging him on or is he egging him on?
0:30:05 It’s a little bit of both, it’s a feedback loop,
0:30:07 it’s an organic process.
0:30:08 – It’s jazz.
0:30:10 – It’s jazz, yeah.
0:30:11 You know, most American politicians,
0:30:14 although they’re quite good at what they do,
0:30:16 don’t have that.
0:30:18 They form messages, they test messages out,
0:30:20 there’s kind of a scientific approach,
0:30:22 but he does it on the fly.
0:30:24 When he’s riffing with the crowd,
0:30:28 like a DJ or like a standup comic,
0:30:30 he’s having a great time and they’re having a great time.
0:30:35 His relationship with the crowd is unique
0:30:39 and not something that many American politicians can do.
0:30:41 Even ones that are quite charismatic
0:30:44 and are great orders, it’s something else.
0:30:47 – This may be too big of a pivot, but whatever.
0:30:51 You know, I’ve always thought of myself as a materialist.
0:30:52 – Yeah.
0:30:54 – You know, I’ve never identified as a Marxist,
0:30:56 but the basic materialist conception of history
0:30:59 always seemed true enough to me.
0:31:01 And there’s a case in the book
0:31:03 and there’s shades of it in this conversation
0:31:08 that the disorder we’re dealing with now is downstream
0:31:11 of all these material and social and economic shifts
0:31:16 that really exploded in the ’80s under Reagan.
0:31:19 And you know, look, there’s always this debate
0:31:21 about how the material world interacts
0:31:23 with the world of ideas.
0:31:25 You know, this is Hegel and Marx and who the hell knows,
0:31:26 right?
0:31:28 I’d be a famous philosopher if I had an answer to that.
0:31:30 But I do wonder what you think.
0:31:32 Even if we waved a magic wand
0:31:35 and radically improved everyone’s material conditions
0:31:36 so that no one really wanted for anything
0:31:39 so that there really wasn’t a material basis
0:31:43 for economic or racial grievances
0:31:47 and there was some modicum of community and solidarity,
0:31:49 how much would it really matter?
0:31:51 Like would politics be all that different today
0:31:54 or would we just keep spinning the same tracks,
0:31:55 the same basic arguments
0:31:59 in an increasingly mediated environment
0:32:03 where our technologies shape our perceptions of the world?
0:32:06 I mean, I just have to believe that it would matter,
0:32:07 but I’m honestly not sure it would matter
0:32:10 nearly as much as we think.
0:32:12 – Like I think the material basis of society
0:32:14 and the way we have these mediated relationships
0:32:17 with each other are not separate.
0:32:22 We are entering a world where what it means
0:32:25 to be a person is quite different
0:32:29 from what it meant in the 20th century.
0:32:32 And our forms of society and association
0:32:34 are changing in radical ways
0:32:36 that are frankly traumatic for people.
0:32:39 I think that we don’t really realize it,
0:32:41 but we’re in touch with each other
0:32:44 in which the other’s thoughts
0:32:46 in ways that were inconceivable.
0:32:49 I mean, we are approaching communal life
0:32:51 in ways that were unimaginable.
0:32:53 I mean, we’re constantly in touch.
0:32:56 You can in a moment hear what other people are thinking
0:32:57 and kind of get a sense of what the whole crowd
0:33:00 and the whole world is thinking through social media.
0:33:02 The effects that that’s having on the human psyche
0:33:04 and the human self,
0:33:07 we have an inkling of what that’s doing to change us
0:33:09 and what a radical change that is,
0:33:12 but I don’t think we’ve quite come to terms with it.
0:33:15 And it’s frightening and it’s creating disruptions
0:33:17 on both the personal and the national
0:33:19 and the international level.
0:33:23 I think that the way we are turned into beings
0:33:26 that produce and consume,
0:33:31 that’s always gonna create tensions in society.
0:33:34 – I mean, isn’t it funny how it’s like,
0:33:35 it doesn’t really matter
0:33:38 which dimension of the problem we’re talking about.
0:33:40 If you trace it back far enough,
0:33:43 you just sort of end up at the doorstep of capitalism.
0:33:46 But you can’t say capitalism is bad, right?
0:33:48 That’s not a very helpful argument.
0:33:49 – I don’t think it’s bad or good.
0:33:53 I mean, I think it’s the way that we organize our society
0:33:55 and the way that we’ve organized our society,
0:33:58 I think has some deep problems
0:34:01 and the echoes and reverberations of those problems
0:34:04 are not always recognized as coming from that route.
0:34:06 With that being said,
0:34:07 there’s another problem which is just
0:34:09 to look at every social problem
0:34:12 which probably has fixes that are more local and easy.
0:34:13 And just to throw your hands up and say,
0:34:15 well, that’s the nature of capitalism.
0:34:16 There’s nothing we can do about it
0:34:18 until we get rid of capitalism.
0:34:20 I don’t think that’s helpful either.
0:34:23 I do believe there are institutions,
0:34:24 there are fixes,
0:34:28 there are ways people can alter their lives
0:34:32 and create new ways of being with themselves
0:34:36 and another that preserve and protect one
0:34:39 from some of those disrupting and dissolving forces.
0:34:44 But yeah, I think ultimately we are at the mercy
0:34:47 of the way our society produces and reproduces.
0:34:48 You gotta get a job.
0:34:50 And if you don’t, you’re gonna be in trouble
0:34:51 in some one way or the other.
0:34:54 But yeah, I think any serious thinking
0:34:58 about who we are as a society
0:35:00 has to start with those basic realities.
0:35:02 – I guess I wonder where you think
0:35:04 American politics is heading.
0:35:06 And I’m not asking the banal,
0:35:08 are you optimistic or pessimistic question.
0:35:10 I’m thinking more about where these currents
0:35:12 are taking us, right?
0:35:14 The right is obviously what it is right now.
0:35:17 And I think the left is adrift in its own way.
0:35:19 But what’s your sense of where we’re going
0:35:22 in the short to medium term?
0:35:25 – I’m very concerned across the world
0:35:29 that this kind of nationalism is ascendant
0:35:32 in a way that’s very difficult to stop.
0:35:35 We’ve seen the surge of right-wing nationalism in Europe
0:35:37 where that’s heading could be very frightening.
0:35:40 We’ve seen Trump not losing popularity
0:35:42 after his manifest criminality
0:35:44 in his attempt to overthrow the government,
0:35:46 maybe losing some popularity.
0:35:48 What I’m concerned about is that this increasing
0:35:53 fragmentation of the world into these antagonistic groups
0:36:00 is setting the groundwork for a war, a global war.
0:36:05 And we already see the hints of that in Ukraine,
0:36:09 in Israel, in Palestine, where these nationalist wars
0:36:11 are taking place.
0:36:15 What I am very concerned about now
0:36:20 is that that tendency will intensify and increase.
0:36:21 I’m not saying we’re heading towards
0:36:23 a third world war necessarily,
0:36:25 but I would say if my big worry is
0:36:26 in the direction of the world,
0:36:28 obviously that’s the biggest one.
0:36:38 – After one more short break,
0:36:41 what can we learn about the present and the future
0:36:43 by looking back at the ’90s?
0:36:44 Stay with us.
0:36:47 (dramatic music)
0:37:06 – I think both of us believe the American right
0:37:09 really recognized something deep and true
0:37:12 about the country after the Cold War.
0:37:14 They had this Schmittian sense of the need
0:37:16 for a new political enemy.
0:37:19 And the left, perhaps because this is just the nature
0:37:23 of the left, didn’t or couldn’t do that,
0:37:24 which was fine at the time.
0:37:26 Again, Bill Clinton served two terms.
0:37:29 But from our perch in 2024,
0:37:31 do you think the left missed an opportunity
0:37:34 to redefine themselves and the country during this time?
0:37:37 Or is this something the left just wasn’t equipped,
0:37:38 isn’t equipped to do?
0:37:39 – I don’t know.
0:37:42 They were so defeated by first Reagan,
0:37:44 the end of the Cold War also seemed
0:37:46 to really discredit socialism.
0:37:49 I think it was just as such a time
0:37:54 when the left was not able to articulate a vision
0:37:55 of the future.
0:37:57 And I think it’s still struggling.
0:37:58 I think it’s pretty weak.
0:38:00 And I think that’s why we have,
0:38:02 nationalism is so strong.
0:38:05 The left is supposed to be the side giving the story
0:38:08 of collectivism and solidarity.
0:38:10 And nationalism provides a story about that.
0:38:12 That’s a lot more appealing to a lot of people
0:38:14 than anything the left has had to offer.
0:38:16 And that’s unfortunate.
0:38:19 I don’t know how to solve that problem.
0:38:22 The left has to take nationalism seriously.
0:38:24 It once did.
0:38:28 Liberals are concerned about the rise of nationalism.
0:38:31 I think it’s the most destructive ideology
0:38:35 that man has ever come up with.
0:38:40 And when it turns into a racial versions of it unspeakable
0:38:42 and what it can do, with that being said,
0:38:45 it has deep emotional appeals to people
0:38:48 that are long-term in abiding.
0:38:52 And that needs to be taken seriously and analyzed
0:38:54 and thought about, not just said, well,
0:38:57 this is either backwards or is gonna fade away
0:38:59 off its own accord.
0:39:02 Yeah, there is no technocratic means
0:39:06 of circumnavigating the primacy of myth
0:39:11 and identity and tribal passions in human beings.
0:39:15 It’s just written into our codes, as it were.
0:39:16 The right is certainly just more tuned to that
0:39:19 for a variety of reasons and very, very good
0:39:21 at weaponizing that, at pathologizing it.
0:39:24 Yeah, I think that the liberals became very technocratic
0:39:28 and very focused on policy and statistics and so forth.
0:39:32 And as Cuomo says, you campaign in poetry
0:39:33 and you govern in prose.
0:39:37 And I think that, we are missing the poetry a little bit
0:39:42 and unfortunately, the right is better at it right now.
0:39:47 Counterfactuals are often pointless, but they are fun.
0:39:50 And I guess I occasionally wonder
0:39:54 where we would be right now politically
0:39:59 if George W. Bush and the forever wars never happened.
0:40:02 Yeah, I’m not sure we have enough distance truly
0:40:04 from that period to know, but I don’t know.
0:40:06 What do you think?
0:40:07 Well, here’s what I’ll say about that,
0:40:10 is that I think that it was always one possibility
0:40:12 that the Republicans tried to trot out
0:40:15 for the problems of national unity we’ve discovered.
0:40:18 And also for economic problems was to try to start a war.
0:40:20 So I think that that was always a lurking political
0:40:23 possibility that Republicans really believed in.
0:40:24 So it might not have happened then,
0:40:25 but they would have given a shot
0:40:28 and then its failures would have become manifest.
0:40:30 So in the era that I write about,
0:40:33 the Gulf War happens, it’s a great success,
0:40:35 but its success is not very lasting.
0:40:38 Why didn’t the war create the sense of national unity
0:40:39 that it was supposed to?
0:40:40 It was very popular.
0:40:43 People said we’ve cured the Vietnam syndrome,
0:40:46 but then it doesn’t really last.
0:40:49 And the same thing, the war on terror,
0:40:51 there’s, of course, we have the failures of Vietnam.
0:40:54 I mean, the failures, I’m sorry, telling.
0:40:57 The failures of Iraq, the failures in Afghanistan,
0:40:59 these are ambivalent results.
0:41:02 But, you know, the national project of uniting
0:41:05 in face of a common enemy didn’t even work.
0:41:10 So I think that the wars contributed to where we’re at,
0:41:13 but I also just think that war as a tool
0:41:16 of national unification is limited,
0:41:19 especially when it doesn’t involve mass mobilization.
0:41:23 – I remember reading people like, you know, Alan Bloom
0:41:26 or Christopher Lash in college and thinking, you know,
0:41:31 this is just kind of boilerplate conservative nostalgia.
0:41:32 – Right.
0:41:33 – But I don’t know.
0:41:37 I think sometimes I do wonder if maybe the concerns
0:41:42 about nihilism and the dead end of liberal individualism
0:41:47 were more justified than people like me wanted to believe.
0:41:51 – There is a sense, I think there was a broad sense
0:41:54 of revulsion or boredom or something
0:41:56 with anything that comes along
0:41:59 that promises some kind of social answer
0:42:02 and nothing seems to really, really furrowing.
0:42:05 Maybe they were not emphasizing the right parts
0:42:07 of the problem.
0:42:13 There is a certain sourness and a certain, yeah, nihilism
0:42:18 or inability for things to be really believed in
0:42:23 wholeheartedly that feels pervasive and continuing.
0:42:26 And the only things that seem to be getting people’s
0:42:30 passionate, you know, devotion are quite negative.
0:42:32 – There’s a lot to take away
0:42:34 from this excellent book, truly.
0:42:38 But the message, as I understand it and correct me
0:42:42 if I’m wrong, really is that we should pay closer attention
0:42:46 to the stuff that seems kooky or marginal in the moment
0:42:50 because, you know, often today’s fringe is tomorrow’s
0:42:54 mainstream and if that’s the case, I gotta say
0:42:58 I’m not super pumped about tomorrow, John.
0:43:01 – What you just articulated as one of the key messages
0:43:04 or what I wanted the book to help people
0:43:07 how to interpret politics, how to interpret the present
0:43:08 is exactly right.
0:43:11 But I don’t want this to instill a sense of hopelessness
0:43:14 to people at all because I also think there’s a lot
0:43:15 of contingency.
0:43:17 A lot of things can change and a lot of things can happen.
0:43:21 I mean, I don’t think it’s inevitable that we end up
0:43:24 with this kind of ruler or that kind of ruler.
0:43:28 The talents of politicians, just the absolute chaos
0:43:30 of the world, these things matter.
0:43:34 Events take place that change things rapidly.
0:43:35 You know, contingencies happen.
0:43:37 So I don’t want it to be like,
0:43:39 this is a message of doom and gloom.
0:43:43 It’s just that these things are out there.
0:43:44 They shouldn’t be ignored.
0:43:48 They have power, but they don’t have infinite power.
0:43:49 Nothing does.
0:43:52 Everything falls apart for good and bad, you know?
0:43:55 And everything ends and other things begin.
0:43:59 So I don’t think it’s a prophecy of doom in any way.
0:44:02 I think it’s just to take seriously sometimes
0:44:04 the things that are not taken seriously.
0:44:05 – Yeah, that’s a good note to end on.
0:44:08 Again, that book really is great.
0:44:09 – Thank you so much.
0:44:12 – And your newsletter on Substack on Popular Front
0:44:14 is among the sharpest and most probing things
0:44:16 being written about politics.
0:44:17 I also would highly recommend that.
0:44:19 – I really appreciate that, Trump.
0:44:20 – And yeah, this chat was, for me,
0:44:22 at least a long time coming
0:44:23 ’cause I’ve been reading you for a while.
0:44:25 And I’m glad I finally got you on the show.
0:44:28 So thanks.
0:44:28 – Yeah, thank you.
0:44:30 This is really great.
0:44:42 – So yeah, that was fun.
0:44:45 That conversation ended up being a little bit more
0:44:48 about Trump than I anticipated.
0:44:52 Unfortunately, Trump just sort of swallows everything.
0:44:56 But yeah, as always, let me know what you think.
0:44:59 I read those emails, I try to respond to all of them.
0:45:03 Drop us a line at thegrayarea@vox.com.
0:45:05 And if you don’t have time to do that,
0:45:08 you do have time to rate, review, subscribe.
0:45:09 So do that.
0:45:14 – This episode was produced by John Arons,
0:45:16 edited by Jorge Just,
0:45:18 engineered by Patrick Boyd,
0:45:20 fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
0:45:23 and Alex Ovington wrote our theme music.
0:45:25 New episodes of the Gray Area Drop on Mondays,
0:45:27 listen and subscribe.
0:45:29 This show is part of VOX.
0:45:31 Support VOX’s journalism
0:45:33 by joining our membership program today.
0:45:36 Go to vox.com/members to sign up.
0:45:38 (upbeat music)
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0:45:51 you
We’re living in an era of extreme partisan politics, rising resentment, and fractured news media. Writer John Ganz believes that we can trace the dysfunction to the 1990s, when right-wing populists like Pat Buchanan and white supremacist David Duke transformed Republican politics. He joins Sean to talk about the 1990s and how it laid the groundwork for Trump. His book is When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: John Ganz (@lionel_trolling). His book is When the Clock Broke.
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- Producer: Jon Ehrens
- Engineer: Patrick Boyd
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